Smoke stacks and exhaust pipes around the world are blasting greenhouse gas emissions to a new record annual high . They should break 39 billion tons this year .

But there 's also some good news , a new study published Tuesday said . The rate at which people are polluting the air may be leveling off .

In the West , emissions contributing to global warming even dropped last year .

The United States pumped 3.7 % less carbon dioxide into the air in 2012 than in the previous year ; Europe 1.8 % less .

Globally , greenhouse gases are being emitted at a slower rate this year than they were last year , and in both years the climb in emissions was less intense than in the past decade taken as a whole , said researchers at Britain 's East Anglia University .

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Drop in the bucket

It 's an improvement -- but a drop in the bucket by global emission standards .

Greenhouse gases are blowing into the atmosphere at rates 61 % higher than they were in 1990 , the baseline year for the Kyoto Protocol .

The international agreement is designed to decrease emissions contributing to global warming by holding its signees to reduction goals . The vast majority of the world 's nations have signed on to it .

The United States is not one of them .

China is .

But the world 's largest carbon emitter , which wrested the dubious title from the United States in recent years , pumped 5.9 % more into the atmosphere in 2012 than in the previous year .

India contributed 7.7 % more emissions in 2012 .

Path to catastrophe

Not only must the increase stop , the researchers said , but industrialized nations must achieve a global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions .

Time is running out to stop the world from reaching a dreading global warming threshold .

The world is on a course with current emission levels to reach a rise in global temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius or more and end up in the worst climate change scenario issued by the U.N. panel on climate change .

The study includes a carbon atlas , which shows levels of pollution emitted by each nation and their development over the last 50 years .

In 2012 , the largest contributors of greenhouse gases were China with 27 % , the United States with 14 % and the European Union with 10 % .

On an individual basis , China and the EU were at the same level , with 7.7 tons of carbon gas emitted per person and year .

Americans still polluted the most by far , with more than 17 tons of carbon gas emitted per person in 2012 .

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Greenhouse gas emissions are 61 % higher than they were in 1990

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In the West , they have fallen ; the U.S. produced 3.7 % less in 2012

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China is the biggest polluter with 27 % of the world 's emissions

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But pollution per person is highest in the United States